The Manhattan District Attorney is trying to flip Allen Weisselberg. An unearthed deposition suggests he knows the Trump Organization has broken the law.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/allen-weisselberg-trump-organization-deposition
Ivanka, Donald and Donald Jr. Trump with Allen Weisselberg at a press conference at Trump Tower.
As you’ve probably heard by now, at present Donald Trump is drowning in criminal investigations and is possibly legally screwed. Aside from the whopping 29 lawsuits he is facing—which is no small thing to set aside!—he is the subject of at least three criminal investigations, the most worrisome one, from the standpoint of staying out of prison, being the Manhattan district attorney’s. For months now, Cyrus Vance Jr. has been looking into possible tax, banking, and insurance fraud, and in February scored a major victory when the Supreme Court cleared the way for him to get his hands on Trump‘s tax returns, which the ex-president responded to like a man who knows he’s broken the law and is about to get caught. Another seemingly crucial development appeared to occur earlier this month, when the former daughter-in-law of longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg turned over a trove of documents to Vance‘s office that could contain the kind of information that might get Weisselberg, who has described himself as the “eyes and ears” of the Trump Organization, to flip and testify against his boss. As Jennifer Weisselberg told Air Mail of her ex-father-in-law, “Trump doesn’t care about Allen, but Allen knows every bad thing he ever did.”
And speaking of Weisselberg, over the weekend, the New York Daily News reported that the Trump Organization employee had some extremely interesting things to say in a 2015 deposition that could come back to haunt Donald Trump today. Per the Daily News:
As former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter suggested on Sunday, it‘s extremely peculiar that a corporate CFO would claim he had nothing to do with the legal side of the business, which a person in his position wouldn’t be able to just wall himself off from, as it would be intertwined in the job. In fact, it‘s almost as though he was purposefully trying to distance himself from any potential law-breaking that may or may not have been going on!
As for whether or not Weisselberg would actually turn on Trump, Barbara Res, a former executive vice president at the Trump Organization, told the Daily News that while Weisselberg “thought Trump was a God” and “drank the Kool-Aid,” there are likely limits to his fealty. “I don’t believe he would commit perjury,” she said. And in fact, the CFO has already cooperated with prosecutors investigating Trump on two previous occasions—with the 2017 New York attorney general’s investigation of the Donald J. Trump Foundation and the 2018 federal probe into alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen MacDougal. In 2019, Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, told Congress that while he personally paid Daniels the money, it was Weisselberg who “made the decision” that he should be repaid over 12 months “so that it would look like a retainer.” So, actually, it sounds like he does get involved in “legal” matters from time to time!
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/allen-weisselberg-trump-organization-deposition
Ivanka, Donald and Donald Jr. Trump with Allen Weisselberg at a press conference at Trump Tower.
As you’ve probably heard by now, at present Donald Trump is drowning in criminal investigations and is possibly legally screwed. Aside from the whopping 29 lawsuits he is facing—which is no small thing to set aside!—he is the subject of at least three criminal investigations, the most worrisome one, from the standpoint of staying out of prison, being the Manhattan district attorney’s. For months now, Cyrus Vance Jr. has been looking into possible tax, banking, and insurance fraud, and in February scored a major victory when the Supreme Court cleared the way for him to get his hands on Trump‘s tax returns, which the ex-president responded to like a man who knows he’s broken the law and is about to get caught. Another seemingly crucial development appeared to occur earlier this month, when the former daughter-in-law of longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg turned over a trove of documents to Vance‘s office that could contain the kind of information that might get Weisselberg, who has described himself as the “eyes and ears” of the Trump Organization, to flip and testify against his boss. As Jennifer Weisselberg told Air Mail of her ex-father-in-law, “Trump doesn’t care about Allen, but Allen knows every bad thing he ever did.”
And speaking of Weisselberg, over the weekend, the New York Daily News reported that the Trump Organization employee had some extremely interesting things to say in a 2015 deposition that could come back to haunt Donald Trump today. Per the Daily News:
Weisselberg’s testimony during the June 2015 deposition tied to lawsuits over the now defunct Trump University offers a rare look at the longtime bean counter—a tight-lipped and low-profile money man who’s been with the Trump Organization since it was run by Fred Trump, and who was once described by Donald Trump in 2004 as a guy who “knows how to get things done.”
In one potentially pivotal piece of information, Weisselberg said his tendency to micromanage had its limits when legal matters were involved, at least in 2015. Asked about the time he found himself “eavesdropping” on a discussion among Trump lawyers about the alleged illegality of marketing Trump’s for-profit school as a “university” in New York, Weisselberg said he didn’t delve deeper.
He admitted asking in a 2005 email if executives planned to “just set up a fictitious office in Illinois/Delaware” as they dealt with the issue, but he said his inquiry centered exclusively on cost, not propriety. “I can’t help them with that role. That’s not my thing,” he testified. “I was only concerned about the economic side of it. They were handling the legal side of it.”
In one potentially pivotal piece of information, Weisselberg said his tendency to micromanage had its limits when legal matters were involved, at least in 2015. Asked about the time he found himself “eavesdropping” on a discussion among Trump lawyers about the alleged illegality of marketing Trump’s for-profit school as a “university” in New York, Weisselberg said he didn’t delve deeper.
He admitted asking in a 2005 email if executives planned to “just set up a fictitious office in Illinois/Delaware” as they dealt with the issue, but he said his inquiry centered exclusively on cost, not propriety. “I can’t help them with that role. That’s not my thing,” he testified. “I was only concerned about the economic side of it. They were handling the legal side of it.”
As former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter suggested on Sunday, it‘s extremely peculiar that a corporate CFO would claim he had nothing to do with the legal side of the business, which a person in his position wouldn’t be able to just wall himself off from, as it would be intertwined in the job. In fact, it‘s almost as though he was purposefully trying to distance himself from any potential law-breaking that may or may not have been going on!
As for whether or not Weisselberg would actually turn on Trump, Barbara Res, a former executive vice president at the Trump Organization, told the Daily News that while Weisselberg “thought Trump was a God” and “drank the Kool-Aid,” there are likely limits to his fealty. “I don’t believe he would commit perjury,” she said. And in fact, the CFO has already cooperated with prosecutors investigating Trump on two previous occasions—with the 2017 New York attorney general’s investigation of the Donald J. Trump Foundation and the 2018 federal probe into alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen MacDougal. In 2019, Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, told Congress that while he personally paid Daniels the money, it was Weisselberg who “made the decision” that he should be repaid over 12 months “so that it would look like a retainer.” So, actually, it sounds like he does get involved in “legal” matters from time to time!
